Interesting posts, weekend of 1/3/10

Friendly reminder: I am looking for Guest Posters. Did you see this week’s guest post by Cat yet?
I want to hear more perspectives on the themes dealt with here at Feminists with Female Sexual Dysfunction. Because I am dealing with such a sensitive topic, I don’t think I can actively recruit new posters, since if I went onto someone else’s blog and said something like, “Hey u wanna write a post about your sexual health and/or feminism on a public forum?!” that would probably be very invasive. For this reason, Guest Posters requesting to remain anonymous will also be taken seriously.
At this time, criteria for inclusion is, “If you think you would fit in here, you probably would.” This may be subject to change but for now we’ll try that & see how it goes.
In an attempt to preemptively fight spam and rude comments, this blog’s email is private. Please leave a comment on this post if you want to write something. I’ll screen comments so you can remain anonymous if you want. That way I’ll have your email and we can collaborate.
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My weekly blog link roundup may get smaller for awhile – I got some new books & a Kindle over the holidays, so I’ve got some heavy reading I’ll need to chip away at this year. In practice, the smaller blog link roundup size shouldn’t matter too much, I’ll just need to be a bit more selective since I’ll need to spend more time book-reading than blog-reading. Not to worry though – you all know you’re allowed to post links of your own in weekly blog link roundup, right? That’s what I mean by share links if’n you got’em.

Now then, on with the weekly blog link roundup. Posts I found interesting for one reason or another over the last week. Share links if’n you got’em.

To start off, I have received some negative news about the portal Wellsphere. I myself was once invited to join this health blogging community. In the end, I decided not to join – because I have absolutely no idea what value-added service they provide other than re-posting all your blog content indiscriminately. Where’s the value add in that? I never even replied to their invitation. (Besides, I consider this to be more of a feminist blog than a health blog… I know it’s really both though…)
Anyway there’s some blog posts written about them which talks about what’s bothersome. How The Health Blogosphere Was Scammed & Wellsphere Scams Over 1,700 Health Bloggers – when you sign up for Wellsphere, you’re also agreeing to let them own & re-use your content as they please. I’ve seen this clause on other websites before, including Ye Olde Geocities over a decade ago. When Geocities changed their terms of service to own your content (you still owned it too but if they decided to use it for anything, you would not have a say in the matter & would not be reimbursed in any form,) I left their hosting service. So anyway, when Wellsphere was sold for a few million dollars in 2009, its content providers (bloggers) weren’t compensated.
It’s just something to think about, if you didn’t already know that about WS and its terms of service. If you already knew about that clause and are perfectly comfortable with it though, then this is all redundant to you anyway. Moving on,

Best post of the week is at Shakesville. 2-D or not 2-D… – I love this post because this post is about my life… well, not really. But what I mean by that is, I have what Mustang Bobby is talking about. I cannot see 3-D and I was born that way. It probably doesn’t help that I had to have multiple eye surgeries as a youth and now need corrective lenses. I have no idea what 3-D looks like, so I don’t miss it. My lack of 3-D perception does not interfere with my daily life; doctors tell me I compensate for a lack of 3-D vision in other ways. I have no idea what they’re talking about, I’m just doin’ my thing. But when other audience members react to 3-D effects in movies, I have no idea what they’re seeing. It all looks like a regular movie to me…
Possibly related, here’s yet another post about the 3-D film Avatar. Avatar: Count the “isms,”

Two posts about the outing of a blog that was thought to be written by a sex worker, Alexa at Real Princess Diaries. Turns out that may not be the case… This follows in the wake of Men with Pens-gate, where a female blogger took on a male persona for fun & profit. Or more correctly, for work and profit. Furthermore the blog in question (RPD) was re-posting picture content without crediting the photographers, which isn’t fair. (I tried reading RPD a few times. As of this moment, it’s offline.) Faux hos from good girls don’t, and Beyond the “Faux Hos” – What about the Faux Academics? – this one is actually more about not doing your homework, plagiarism & the risks of engaging in it.

my visit to London Coco de Mer – Pretty pictures of sex and fetish themed household accessories. Violet Blue also reminds readers that latex condoms can be drying and so require a lubricant. (I don’t like latex condoms but I still use lubricant even with my precious polyurethane ones.) And she’s also got a list of interesting links relating to sex in the news in 2009.

Online gaming study: Women play harder – I would very much like to see this study in question, because a few thoughts come to mind right away. How are we measuring “Harder?” Were the women self-reporting after playing a solo game, or were they being observed? Because I know that if I’m being observed or if I’m playing against someone else (usually these two things go together – being observed, at least by another opponent,) then yeah I’m going to have to concentrate harder than I do when I’m playing solo. Human intellect is quite different from Artificial intellect. I can sometimes figure out the algorithms NPCs use, and discern patterns, but not so with human players. If there’s a big audience, I may do any of the following: Hot dogging for entertainment, attacking more aggressively to knock the strongest opponents out as soon as possible, hanging back to let others pick themselves off, burning through a level as fast as possible to survive, etc. Alone, I probably won’t show off that much. What exactly was this study doing?

Blast From the Past: Rediscovering A Comment I Left at Em & Lo’s About Blue Balls That I Should Have Posted Here – Figleaf re-posts a comment he left about blue balls… which is a real & uncomfortable, sometimes acutely painful phenomenon. (It’s still not an excuse to pressure a partner for sex.) Some women commented at the original post at Em & Lo that they too experienced pelvic pain if they were not able to orgasm from sexual stimulation. I’ve run into the idea that pelvic congestion is not real and it makes my head explode, so I said so at Figleaf’s – and he said he never even thought of blue balls in the larger context of sexual & pelvic pain. What, how did you not think of it that way? Now, there’s another angle to this blue balls discussion… that is, I myself have run into sex experts putting “Don’t worry about orgasm, just enjoy the stimulation” in writing in their advice books. Well, yes, but, when experts do that they may be forgetting about blue balls & the discomfort of vascocongestion from being aroused for so long – orgasm is a shortcut to resolving so much bloodflow in the genitals, so it’s also a physical relief. So if you’re not able to have an orgasm, in light of that physical discomfort, I can understand why someone may cut back on other sexual activity…
It’s kind of like this bartholin’s cyst I’m going to have to have addressed sooner or later. Any sexual stimulation causes the gland to produce fluid, (but it produces more fluid – or perhaps I should say, I respond more – when I’m with my partner,) & the fluid can’t drain the way it used to, so it swells up. It’s not an acute problem right now, and it’s not causing me discomfort yet but if I don’t do something eventually, it will be a problem later. And if I had no way to address the cyst (I do – I’ll probably have to jump through some hoops when I go in for my next gynecological wellness visit, but there’s things that can be done… if I can get the gyno to listen to me… which is easier said than done…) then even I might have to cut back on sexual activity with my partner. Which I don’t want to do. But I don’t want to have a big cyst either.

And as my shoulders have more or less relaxed, and my stress headaches gone from twice a day to only twice this week, I’ve been wondering if maybe I’ve been wrong to blame external stress, and beginning to wonder whether it’s really the idea of feminist blogging itself that is making me want to take a nap lately.Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think that my commitment to feminism has disappeared, and I’m not about to make some butthurt remarks about how women are hard on each other or any of that bullshit. I still, on the daily, find my fist rising involuntarily in response to some amazing post on Broadsheet or Jezebel (thank the Lord for Latoya) or Tiger Beatdown or Twisty or any one of the blogs listed to the right of this post. I am still really glad to have these voices in my life.

What I am having more trouble with, I think, is feeling like I have anything to contribute to that discourse, or, at the very least, anything to contribute at blogspeed. This is a think-fast kind of medium. And I am not a very fast thinker. I am much better when I let things marinate for awhile, turn them over, express them carefully and slowly, and then crawl back in my hole to think some more before I unleash half-masticated thoughts on the world. I end up saying more useful things that way.

That could be me some day. Hence me trying to pace myself & putting out original content at best only about once a week here. I don’t write if I’m too tired, because it will make me more tired & possibly resentful.

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Ah, yeah, I’ve definitely experienced the “pain from unresolved sexual arousal” thing– sometimes even pain with arousal, depending on the circumstances, or the same type of pain without any arousal at all. Apparently it also can happen even if you don’t have FSD; I can remember conversations with women I’ve known where everyone’s conclusion was basically “yep, women can get the equivalent of blue balls.” I think it takes significantly less provocation for me to start experiencing pain than for most women to, though. (Which makes me even less sympathetic to men claiming blue balls as an excuse for rape– if I can deal with it, surely you can, so zip up your pants and take some responsibility.)

Hi There! Ms. SexAbility here, responding to your post. You can email me at mspet72 [at] gmail.com if that doesn’t work let me know sometimes it acts up for some reason. Also wanted to know if you wanted to post some of your blog posts on my site? If so, let me know, and I can set you up so you can post by yourself, linking to your own blog if you’d like!

I don’t find it invasive at all, the thought of someone coming to me and asking if I wanted to write posts for a blog on anything relating to sexuality and disability, chronic pain in my situation. I figure that if I’m writing about it online, well then, I’m choosing a certain about of exhibitionism in the first place, and WANT folks to read my thoughts, etc.

Hi there! I’ve been following this blog for a bit and I’d love to guest-post. I have primary vaginismus, and have been thinking about it through a feminist/disability lens for a while now. Every time I try to write about it I’m afraid a book will come out!

I comment at FWD sometimes and have my own blog (email username dot wordpress dot com), if you’d like to see things I write elsewhere. Anyway, feel free to email me!

The discussions & information on this site are not medical in nature and should not be substituted for medical advice from a trained professional. This site is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any problems.

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